My precinct’s Democratic caucus increased its attendance from three people last year to 93 people this year. For most, last Super Tuesday was their first caucus and as the system was explained, questions popped up across the room. The biggest question was, “Why do we caucus?”
In a Democratic caucus, voters are split up by whom they support and then assigned a proportional number of delegates to represent them. These delegates attend the county’s assembly convention. Reasonably straightforward right? Maybe, except delegates’ loyalties to candidates are non-binding. In most cases delegates will not change their candidate, but it does leave a door wide open for corruption.
Then there are Super Delegates. Super Delegates are elected officials who can vote for whomever they want. Winning the Super Delegate vote is like a congressional popularity contest. Why not just give the candidacy to whomever has the most friends on Facebook? At least that would reflect the opinion of a portion of the American public.
The caucus system, with all its problems, has not been changed because delegate counts have not mattered since 1984 for Democrats and 1976 for Republicans. This year, however, has proven historic with the extremely tight race between Clinton and Obama.
Who exactly is ahead in the Democratic race anyway? If you look at the delegate counts, it looks like Obama has been keeping a slight lead over Clinton, but if you add in the Super Delegates, Clinton pulls ahead by approximately 100 delegates. Super Delegates are elected officials, supposed representatives of the people, who have no actual obligation to represent the people in their vote. Democracy at its finest, my friends.
John Edwards managed to rack up some delegates before he withdrew his candidacy. Edwards can influence his delegates to vote for another specific candidate if he so chooses. The few delegates Edwards has could make a major difference in the outcome of this close race. When it comes time for the Democratic National Convention, we could very well see Edwards getting ‘buddy-buddy’ with one of the candidates, saying “I’ve got some extra delegates, and you still need a VP… What a coincidence: let me buy you a beer.”
Clinton announced her candidacy in January of 2007, with Obama announcing his a month later. In 2007, over $500 million was raised for campaigns for the 2008 elections. In the last two months, Democrats have raised over $200 million, and this is just for the race for the Democratic nomination. The presidential race hasn’t even started. Imagine what this kind of money could do for education.
Back to my precinct’s question: “Why do we hold a caucus anyway?” Why can’t the people just vote for the candidates?
Hundreds of millions of dollars would be saved if the country held a general primary on a single day to decide each party’s candidate. That way the candidate would be who the people want. Perhaps this year’s pre-election melee will make our nation rethink how the election process works.
